CategoryUsability Engineering

Taking the train every morning and night, I gotta deal with loud conversations and pain in the butt ringtones constantly. I couldn’t help googling why we all find cell-talk annoying. Here’s a piece by Jakob Nielsen, the usability guru:

Summary:

Bystanders rated mobile-phone conversations as dramatically more noticeable, intrusive, and annoying than conversations conducted face-to-face. While volume was an issue, hearing only half a discussion also seemed to up the irritation factor….